


thirty-seven degrees

by wjjmwmsn5



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, cas is just cold and wants a blanket and a bf to keep him warm tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 06:51:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13002219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wjjmwmsn5/pseuds/wjjmwmsn5
Summary: Newly-human Cas calls the Winchesters and asks them to pick him up; turns out, he really likes warm blankets and soft sweaters, and Dean can't get over how adorable he is.





	thirty-seven degrees

**Author's Note:**

> requested on tumblr!! my url is lesbiankarolinaa and i'm open to requests in the comments or in my inbox on tumblr if you've got any!!
> 
> this was a lot of fun to write but beware that i don't fuckin know what happens at the beginning of s9 so this is just purely what i want to happen for the fluff

It was thirty-seven degrees outside when Dean heard his phone ring. An unknown number, but that wasn’t really unusual. He picked up, leaning back in the chair he was sitting in as he did some research. He waited a moment for the caller to say something, so when they didn’t, he prompted them: “This is Dean Winchester… Who’s calling?”

There was a loud crashing noise, and then some scrambling, and finally a voice. “Hello, Dean,” Cas said, as he always did, voice gruff and low, but so much more uncertain than usual. “Sorry, I dropped the phone. I think I need some assistance.” 

“Cas?” Dean said, already standing up. “Where the hell are you, man?” 

He had no idea why he was standing up. He didn’t know what he could do yet, but his first reaction was that he needed to get out, get in the Impala, with a trunk full of weapons and a destination. He needed to  _ see  _ him, to see their angel, to feel like maybe they could get their ducks in a row again after heaven descended into chaos yet another time.  

“Um, not sure,” Cas said. “Illinois, maybe? Are you able to come get me?” 

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he said, jogging over to his jacket and shoes. He had a vague destination. Good enough. Now he needed a goal. An explanation. Most importantly, he just needed Cas, safe. “Are you okay? Why do you need a ride? What’s going on?” 

“I… appear to be human.”

“What?” He banged Sam’s door the moment he arrived at it. “Cas—”

“Dean, I believe I have limited time on these phones and I don’t have any money,” he told him, his voice a little more urgent now. “I don’t know how to get my location to you. It’s very cold.”

Sam opened his door. “What—?”

“Hang on, hang on,” Dean said, putting Cas on speaker. “Can you figure out what town you’re in and then, I don’t know, ask somebody at a gas station to use their phone?” 

“I can certainly try,” he said. 

“We’ll start heading up to Illinois. Call me back as soon as you know where you are.” 

Cas hung up the phone and Dean let out a breath. “Get your shoes on,” he said. “Cas is a human and we’ve gotta go get him.” Sam opened his mouth to ask all the questions Dean didn’t know the answers to, so he added, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Let’s just go. He says he’s cold.”

* * *

Cas was sitting on the bench in front of the courthouse in a small town in Illinois, his coat wrapped tight around him as he fought against the chill. Dean had driven as fast as he could the moment he knew what to put into the GPS. He parked on the square, got out of the car, and went over to him. He looked weak and  _ tiny _ , not like the badass angel that smote demons like it was nothing on cases with them before. Sam got out after Dean, hurrying over to their friend.

“God, you look freezing,” Dean said as he threw an arm around him, helping him over to the Impala.

Cas nodded his head. He was shivering. A lot. “It’s very cold.” 

Dean had brought a couple blankets with them in the Impala. Cas wrapped them around himself gratefully as they pulled away from the little town’s square, back towards the bunker in Kansas. Dean turned the music down low enough that they could hear what Cas was saying. 

“So… you’re human now?” Sam asked, turning backwards in his seat to look at Cas. Dean looked at him in the Impala’s mirror, seeing everything below his head disappear underneath the two fluffiest blankets they could find in the bunker. 

“Yes, that appears to be the case,” Cas said. He didn’t seem like he wanted to open up, which at first was frustrating, but then Dean remembered how painful it must have been for his grace to get ripped from him, however it had happened. If Cas didn’t want to talk about it yet, he couldn’t ask him to. Dean still hadn’t opened up about all the horrors that had happened to him over his lifetime, so it wasn’t exactly like he was the poster boy for communication. “And I’m very hungry.”

Dean felt something in his chest warm up and he let out a laugh, a breathy one, that expelled all of his worries for Cas. This was a shitty thing they’d been dealt, but they had dealt with shittier things before. Cas was safe now, wrapped tightly in warm blankets, and Dean was going to swing through this drive-through they were passing and get them all burgers. And they were going to go back to the bunker, where they were going to get him a hot shower and something warm and clean to wear, and a room to sleep in. 

Maybe things would be okay this way. 

* * *

Back in the bunker, Cas went to shower and Dean went to find something warm for him to wear. He had a sweatshirt that he rarely ever wore, and some sweatpants that he wore to sleep sometimes. Cas had still complained about being cold, even under the blankets and with the heat in the Impala blasting until Sam begged him to turn it down a bit. Maybe Jimmy Novak had just been cold-blooded. Regardless, Dean figured he’d give him something warm. 

“I’ve got an old sweater,” Sam said, coming into the dining room with the sweater in his hands. 

“Cool. That ought to be warm for him.” 

Dean sat back in one of the chairs, looking at the unfinished research he left behind that afternoon to to go get Cas. He could launch back into it, but his mind was still on making sure Cas settled in well. 

Sam left the room, but came back a moment later with three beers in hand. He slid one down to Dean. “How are you feeling about this?” he asked him. 

Dean’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Me? I don’t know. I just want to make sure he’s okay.” 

“Yeah.” Sam nodded. There was something he wasn’t saying, but Dean wasn’t in the headspace to ask. 

Cas walked through the door soon, Jimmy Novak’s pants and undershirt on, and a towel wrapped around his arms. “There’s a draft in here,” he noted. He looked at the clothes on the table. “Are those for me?”

Dean nodded, tossing them over to him. Cas caught them clumsily and turned around without another word, heading back into the bathroom to change. He had fallen asleep on the drive to the bunker, head leaned back against the seat with those blankets still tucked around him, and he had been bleary ever since they woke him up so he could go get a shower. Bleary-eyed Cas was something Dean had never seen before, and he hadn’t been able to get rid of that warm feeling in his chest since he heard the way Cas woke up with a soft “Hmm?” 

He came back in Sam’s sweater, which was oversized on him, and Dean’s sweatpants, and sat down next to Dean at the table, across from Sam. He took the beer offered to him with a grateful nod, opening it up and taking a sip. 

“How’re you feeling, man?” Dean asked, eyes stuck on their angel, now a human. 

Cas looked at him and thought for a moment, and a little smile appeared on his face. “I had never considered how nice good water pressure in a shower is,” he said. “I believe that shower has good water pressure, at least. I have nothing to compare it to, of course.” 

Dean nodded, a grin coming to his face. “Yeah, our shower is pretty good,” he agreed. “How are you feeling, though?” He didn’t mean to prod, but he didn’t want Cas to bottle it all in. He didn’t have to talk about it, but Dean needed something to go off of, something to tell him how he could help. Something so he wasn’t sitting there in front of him, with his chest so warm, watching his best friend as he wore a sweater whose sleeves buried his hands and talked about the nice water pressure in the bunker’s shower. 

“I don’t know how to answer that, Dean,” he told him, his voice so honest, and, God, it just made Dean want to rest. He wanted to shut his eyes, to  _ forget  _ that the world made everything so hard and sharp, to forget that Naomi had hurt Cas. He just wanted to forget everything, except sharing a beer with his brother, and the sound of Cas’s voice, and the oversized sweater. He hadn’t felt at this much peace in so fucking long. 

It wasn’t like the world wasn’t falling apart, as always, but… Cas was here, Sam was here, Kevin was in the other room. Charlie was off being Charlie. It felt like a family, one that hadn’t been complete until Cas was sitting at the dining room table with them, sipping at a beer of his own. 

* * *

“This sweater is very comfortable,” Cas commented, breaking a silence. He stretched his arms out, so his fingers went beyond the length of the fabric. Dean was pretty sure that sweater was even too big on Sam. It swallowed Cas. “It’s very soft.” 

They were in the living room now, or the room that they had made into the living room. For movie nights. Sam had already gone off to bed, but Dean wanted to show Cas some movies, now that he could really sit down and appreciate them with a big bowl of popcorn and a warm blanket he insisted on draping over himself the moment the nighttime brought the temperature a degree lower in the bunker. 

Dean nodded, leaning his head back against the couch cushion. He was too tired to be watching movies with Cas, but he didn’t want him to go to bed his first night as a human still afraid, still remembering freezing his ass off out in front of that courthouse as he waited for them, remembering the first time he felt human hunger and human fear. He just wanted Cas to go to bed warm, remembering a funny movie, and popcorn, and a couple of beers with a friend. 

“You seem tired.” Cas had shifted slightly. He wasn’t facing the TV now; his attention was more focused on Dean. He looked like a kid at a sleepover, the way he was propped up on the couch. Dean’s heart burst in his chest every time he glanced at him, so he kept his eyes on the ceiling. “You can go to bed, Dean.”

“S’good movie, Cas, I don’t wanna miss it,” he said, nodding toward the screen, although he hadn’t been listening for the past five minutes. 

Cas stood up and after a moment, he held his hand out to Dean. To help him up. He looked at that hand for a moment, and considered accepting it, considered going to bed in his room, with Cas as content next door as he could be after having lost his grace. But instead he grabbed the hand and tugged toward him, so Cas took a step forward and sat back down on the couch. He was closer to Dean this time, the only thing between them that goddamn mile-thick fluffy blanket his angel had attached himself to. 

“This blanket is also very soft,” Cas added, and Dean understood, because it was Cas. It was Cas, and he was a dorky guy, a guy who didn’t know how to speak, especially not with human emotions roiling inside him, and Dean wondered if he was speaking around that burning hotness in his chest too, if the words were erupting from the lava that was bubbling in his heart.

He wanted to fall asleep there, on the couch, but he wasn’t comfortable, and Cas was still looking at him curiously with that blanket separating them. The space between them felt like ice that needed to be melted. And it could be, from simply the way Cas’s eyes seemed so blue, and held so much, and were so many things at once. Because he was a weird and dorky guy, but he was also so fucking strong, so resilient, and a badass who he would bring into battle any day. But those eyes were also soft, and he talked about soft sweaters, and good water pressure, and he wrapped himself in warm blankets at all opportunities. 

Yeah, this wasn’t good, and yeah, they would try to get his grace back, but Dean wanted to be swallowed up in something warm next to Cas. He wanted to lean his head in the crook of his neck and feel their shared heat, with his arm around him, and Cas’s around him, and everything getting tangled and confused, but it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter; they wouldn’t need to know if there was a better way, because it would be their way. 

“Let’s go to bed,” Dean said quietly, standing up himself. Cas took his hand, and grabbed the blanket with his other. They walked into Dean’s room, and Cas shut the door. And then there they were, and Dean’s eyelids were drooping as he moved underneath the comforter. He was so fucking tired, with all that had happened lately, but damn, he was sure this would be the best sleep he had in ages. 

“There’s a draft all over this bunker,” Cas whispered to him, after Dean shut out the light, as though he would wake someone if he rose his voice. 

“You get used to it.” Dean couldn’t see much in the dark, through his bleariness, but he could see Cas’s outline. He looked where his face was. One of his knees touched Cas’s, and he reached out and held his hand. “Are you always going to be this cold?”

“This vessel is exasperating,” Cas responded. He seemed tired, too, like he would drift off any moment, and Dean understood. Listening to his wavering, gravelly whisper seemed to lull him further. 

“I’m here. While you get used to it.” 

“This bed is very soft, Dean.” 

“Night, Cas.” 

It was warm all night long. 


End file.
